2007-07-31 03:55:20
HOLA!!! It’s 5:00 A.M. One would think it’s a bit early to rise for the day, but try to tell that to the dozens of roosters that are beckoning the sun to peak over the hills surrounding us here in Copala, Mexico. The “cock-a-doodling” grows into a crescendo as each rooster tries to outdo the other in volume as if trying to reach a long lost relative on the other side of the small valley, only about a mile across, that our village is resting in. Each and every morning, once the roosters get things going, the other animals come to life to add to the sounds of morning. One can hear the cows begin their mournful mooing as the donkeys cut through the morning mist with hee-hawing of one promoting others to join in chorus. Mother pigs, with their piglets, forage the roadsides looking for those morsels of breakfast. The multitude of bird life has obviously been awakened by the now rising sun and sounds of the other animals. They join in the harmonic symphony of music with their own unique calling. A flock of Military Macaws fly overhead with the screeching that goes along with them. At 6:50 A.M., after the coffee pot has dripped a cup of flavorful brew to enjoy on our patio, I hear the distant blaring of the horn of the bus that is making its way down the mountain from the east, indicating that it will be at the Copala turn off in 10 minutes. If you had plans on taking the bus to either Concordia, a 30 minute ride down the mountain, or Mazatlan, a one and a half hour $4.00 ride to the shore, you’d best scurry on up to the road or you’ll miss your ride. Mornings are a beautiful time of day, and here in Copala, it’s easy to watch the day unfold from the comfort of the hammock on the patio of our house. We are situated on the hillside of one of valleys walls, overlooking the central part of the village of about 500 people. The historic church is situated on the far end of the town square, which we overlook, and when the massive doors are fully open, we are able to see directly into the nave, where the walls are covered with ornately decorated religious artifacts. The bells echo throughout the valley, announcing the different services throughout the week. I can see a flock of pigeons circling the steeple in preparation to land and rest on its highest points. I notice our village street cleaner at work already. Six days a week, this 76 year old man walks the streets of Copala with a broom and dust pan, keeping our cobblestone streets free from litter. In front of our house I notice that the cobblestones have collected a layer of silt as the runoff of the hillsides during these first few weeks of the rainy season has washed away the dust that accumulated during the winter. We get rain nearly every day now in the afternoons or evenings that may last an hour to six hours. Sometimes it is quite torrential and sitting out watching the pouring rain, lighting and rumbling thunder through the mountain canyons is a pastime we truly enjoy. The towering cumulus thunderheads build up to 40,000 feet most every afternoon over the Sierra Madre mountain range during these summer months and our rains will continue until about the first of November when it will stop and we won’t see a drop of rain until the following late June. One of our first projects after buying our house was to hire local craftsmen to construct a natural rock wall that extends across the back of our property and down both sides to divert the waters and mud from the hillside around our property. This major project took about three months. After the wall was finished we removed six dump truck loads of soil that had once been part of the hillside in back of our house but had settled around the house. What a difference it has made. Shanghai, our Shih Tzu, has just run the length of the front of our lot that is elevated about 6 feet over the cobblestone street as he still is not comfortable with the flow of equestrian traffic as men and boys head out to the hills to tend to the farming on the hillsides surrounding our village. They just look at him and laugh as they give me a wave from the backs of their horses, mules or donkeys. This mode of transportation is more common than not as most of our neighbors do not own cars, an expense they cannot afford. Most of the people we have met in the village are families who have spent generations here in the valley. They are descendents of miners or farmers that have inhabited the valley since 1565. Our friend, Antonio, is now 96 years old and every day he walks the mile, round trip, to the local cemetery where his wife lays in peace. He certainly has much to tell of the history of Copala as he claims he has outlived everyone, including all of his children. Mining is just now starting to again get some attention as new technologies are available to more efficiently extract the gold and silver from the earth. The village is sitting within and on a virtual honeycomb of old abandoned mining tunnels. The new interest in mining in this region has been confined to areas surrounding the village leaving the old tunnels to sleep. It’s hard to imagine that at one time nearly 10,000 people had lived in and around Copala during the mining heyday. The roosters crowing has subsided now and I can now hear music coming from somewhere in the distance. The birds continue their singing as they will throughout the day and people are beginning to move through the tiendas, a morning ritual to pick up food for the days meals. I can hear the slow approach of the unique music of the truck delivering bottled water for our drinking. ($1.00 per 5 gallon bottle) Our town pressurized water supply, as with electricity, has only been in Copala since about 1980 and it is piped in from about 20 kilometers up the mountain. ($52.00 US per year) We use it for cooking, bathing, cleaning etc. but continue to use bottled water for consumption. Vegetable trucks will also be coming in to town and parking near the town square as they do every day. Tortillas are delivered every morning as well buy either the water truck or a man on a motorcycle. We enjoy three small tiendas in town where you can get sodas, bread, eggs and a variety of many other items. Propane is used for our stove and hot water and delivered 2-3 times a week, although one bottle lasts us about 4 months. ($27.00 US) We even have a Good Humor ice cream truck come through town about 3 times a week…..remember them? No beer is sold in town except at the 4 restaurants so you must drive out to the main road heading for Mazatlan to a Corona deposito to purchase it there. No hard liquor within a 30 minute drive down towards Mazatlan in Concordia. There is a family raising cattle nearby that slaughters a cow every Friday and delivers to your door on Saturday morning what you have ordered. The same is true for another family that raises pigs. Fish and poultry are again brought in on the vegetable trucks or twice a week on pickup trucks with ice chests. As you can see, life in Copala isn’t quite like visiting a Safeway superstore. About once or twice a month, we head down to Mazatlan to check on the boat and at that time will hit the major stores to pick up the few items we can’t get locally from Wal-Mart, Sam’s and Home Depot. We just can’t shake those urges for bagels, English muffins and pizza. The peacefulness of our community is the perfect environment for extensive reading, which I do constantly. My 4 books a week are kept fresh as I visit a couple of different book exchanges in Mazatlan every time we visit there. We’re also still doing the remodel on the house which we’ve had to slow down on until our resources catch up with what we have been spending. That’s OK, we need the break after the extensive work we did for 4 months straight. I have also just set up a photo studio in one of our rooms where I can use the professional quality equipment to begin providing the community with excellent quality family and school photos as well as working with the local wood carvers in making custom frames for local photographs tourists will enjoy. Copala is on the list of places to visit in all the hotels, cruise ships and tour guides in Mazatlan. Daily, we receive 10-100 tourists a day to come to our typical Mexican village to look at our birdlife, architecture, cobblestone streets, historical church and generally get the flavor of our village. We enjoy chatting with them as they wander by. I hope my writing has given you a brief idea of the life Lois and I have chosen to live at this time. It’s a wonderful life, laid back, no hustle or bustle of life in the city. We have time to talk to each other and with our neighbors…..although our Spanish is still not worth a hoot. But, our new neighbors are patient with us and are giving us time to learn the language, as there are only about 6 people in town that speak English. Please send us an email and let us know what is going on in your lives. We miss all of you and hope that some time you can come down to visit with us. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that we do not have phone or internet service in Copala, so we must wait until going to either Concordia or Mazatlan to go to an internet café for mail and phone service………oh, yes, and for those who asked, we don’t have an address here in Copala either. I will at a later date send you a kind of address where you could send a letter to if you cared. It is to the town actually and ends up at one tienda, just like our electric bill. Then again, Mexican mail service isn’t the most dependable so I really don’t recommend it. Somehow things end up in a black hole and at best it takes about 3 weeks for delivery. Enjoy the summertime weather and be sure to take good care of each other.
Love,
Gary, Lois and Shanghai